Rick Van Alfen: The country I do know

What a sad, and gloomy commentary by Fred LaSor in the Appeal on April 29. He even used the word sad in regards to a Bernie Sanders supporter in his neighborhood. Let me get a couple of things out of the way and then begin.

First, Dennis Miller isn’t funny and hasn’t been relevant for years. Second, and most important, with the world’s history of facts and knowledge at one’s fingertips via the Internet, laptop or iPhone, Fred tells us he listens to Fox Noise. This tells me almost everything I need to know about him and his audience.

Fred tells us he doesn’t recognize his country anymore. He remembers the days of Eisenhower and Kennedy. I run into these fellas all the time. The “Good Old Days.” Maybe a trip back to the future in a Delorean would ease the pain. I find it troubling he picked a time in our country that was completely white-male dominated to look back to. Before, as Dylan so aptly phrased, “The times, they are a changing.” Before the Civil Rights legislation of 1965, before women had access to birth control, before Roe v. Wade, before the forever changing ruling of Title IX, before laws that allowed millions of Americans to come out of that “damn closet.”

Fred’s Eisenhower days were my childhood days. The 1950s. The glass ceiling for women was so thick the most macho Bronx construction worker couldn’t make a dent with his trusty jack-hammer.

But what about those pesky females who insisted on going to college? Most often they were buried in the secretarial pool, suffered through years of sexual harassment, and often were forced to acquiesce with sexual favors to climb the corporate ladder. Again, another sad commentary of Fred’s “Good Old Days.” The thought a competent, intelligent woman could one day be the CEO of a global corporation was never in the thought process of the 50s Neanderthal mind. A governor? A senator? A president? Prime Minister of jolly old England? President of Germany? And let’s not stop there. Because the times did change. And they always do.

Many studies have shown the conservative mind is resistant to change and innovation. Different ideas and thoughts tend to confuse and cause discomfort to those who believe the status quo is just fine. I’m sure it was downright despicable in 1965, and for decades after, for the white male in the South to watch some uppity black fella sit in the front of the bus and refuse to move. Or sit at a lunch counter in Biloxi, Miss., and tell some white racist server he wants the blue plate special (hold the mayo). Or walk into the Marriott Hotel in Tuscaloosa, Ala., whip out an American Express card, register, and have Joe Bob the Bellman bring his bags to his room. These were the 50s Fred longs for. When no less of a world class entertainer like Sammy Davis Jr. could pack the South Shore Room in Lake Tahoe, and eat in the kitchen when the show was over. The days before Curt Flood told the baseball owners, “I am not a slave.”

And then Fred has to throw the ISIS fear card in there. Like it’s the fault of Obama or the progressives these sub-human murderers are still out there. Hello! It’s religion again. Like the Catholic Church murdering millions in the Inquisition or burying the horror of priest/child abuse for centuries. Or the Southern white baptists who routinely murdered, lynched, and raped black men and women for decades without prosecution. And compounding those horrors with sending tens of thousands of innocent black people to prison on trumped-up charges, racist and faulty eye-witness testimony, and most often without any decent counsel or representation. Science and the revelation of DNA has allowed thousands to be freed from this incredible American injustice. Mr. LaSor, there’s part of the America that you used to know.

I’ve said this too many times, but who in the hell cares if Greg and Steve get married? The Bible has no bearing on our laws. When are you conservatives going to get this fact? Throughout the South and other uneducated states, there’s no stopping the relentless attacks on the individual freedoms of Americans. You shout at the top of your lungs your religious freedoms are being discriminated against. Stop it! You have no freedom to discriminate against others. It’s the law. Leave Americans alone to their Constitutional right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That’s the country I know.

So, in the short time period of 50 years, America has changed tremendously. I, for one, have applauded the changes and look forward to more scientific and technological breakthroughs that improve the quality of our lives. I look forward to more and improved laws that eliminate the constant religious meddling in the governmental process that harms or discriminates against any citizen in this country. And I look forward to the end of the prejudiced mind based on religious or racist’s beliefs. When reason and education supplant blind faith in the supernatural. Sort of like Darwin’s natural selection theory; what works moves on, and what doesn’t fades away.

And I’ll add one more frightening fact for Mr. LaSor to try to comprehend. Every day in this country, 1,000 white babies are born. And every day in this country, 4,000 non-white babies are born. He says he doesn’t recognize his country now, well, to borrow a phrase from Bachman-Turner Overdrive: “You ain’t seen nu-nu-nu-nothin’ yet.”

Rick Van Alfen lives in Carson City.